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Friday, May 1, 2009

Game 1: Canucks WIN!

Am I a little late with the 1st game recap? Yes. But after last night, well I was not able to hammer this thing out after the festivities, and a thing called work got in the way today, but better late than never.

What a 1st game. The first period for the Canucks showed what not playing for 9 days would do to a team, the turnovers and sloppy changes were prevalent. The Blackhawks on the other hand were taking penalties like they were free candy. That gave the Canucks 7 power plays in the opening 40 minutes, not a smart move. Thanks in part to the face of Kyle Wellwood and its affinity for errant sticks, the Canucks drew 8 minutes of penalties just based on his baby face alone. If you were watching the CBC broadcast you got to hear the lovefest about Welly from McLean and Cherry after the game, Cherry even wrote down Wellwood's stats. Maybe next time he should write down the #3 in the blue sweaters name, trust me, it's not Bieska.

In the 3rd, after Kane spent the last few seconds of his 4 minute penalty in the box, he came out to show why he is such a great hockey player. The goal started building the momentum for the Hawks, and a dumb penalty from Hordichuck put them on the power play. Kane gets another clutch goal to get the Hawks within one. What were the Canucks sitting back in the 3rd period? Did they feel that they had the game locked up up 3 goals? From watching the Calgary/Blackhawk series, I think we learnt that they can score 3 goals pretty quick, in fact they can do it in 1:49. You could just watch the sequence of the plays that happened, the chasing around of the hawk players leading up to the Bolland goal looked like it happened in slow motion. Tie freakin game.

With two minutes left in the game, Barker decided to pinch which ended up not working out and left Walker to be the lone defenceman. The Canucks were on a 4-2 from a great feed from Wellwood to Raymond, Bernier got the puck on net, and Salo put in the rebound. 4-3 with just over a minute left and Johnson gets and empty net goal to end it at 5-3.

Khabibulin hasn't won a game against the Canucks since 1998 and that didn't change last night. Next game Saturday night.